X220 Recovery Stuck

[colin.frank5]

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday I got an X220, and I downloaded the recovery discs. I put them on USB drives.
The recovery process works normally until I confirm "Yes" to deleting all the data on the hard drive.
Then it says "Preparing the hard disk...", and then it stalls. There is no hard disk activity.
I let this run for about an hour before I stopped. I have tried multiple times, but with no success.
How can I fix this? Is there a BIOS setting I'm missing?

[31336]

Just a guess but could it be that the Windows Setup (or some ThinkPad-specific partitioning tool) expects to find an MBR disk and you have a GPT one?

You should be able to press Shift-F10 to open the console to be able to investigate the problem further. Normally you could check the logs, in particular the file \Windows\Panther\setupact.log, but this might be somewhat too early for them to appear.

The only BIOS option that would make a big difference here is whether you are booting in UEFI mode or not.

[colin.frank5]

Shift+F10 doesn't work, but the hard disk does say MBR. Couldn't find any logs.
Really confused on this one...

[RealBlackStuff]

Insert your USB drive (or is it stick?)
Check BIOS/Startup and check
>Boot
Boot Priority sequence:
1 USB HDD (should show the USB drive)
2 ATAPI HDD0 (should show your HDD/SSD)
Rest whatever...
Now check and/or set
- UEFI/Legacy Boot to "Both"
- Boot priority to "Legacy"
- Boot Device List F12 to "Enabled"
Press F10 to save and restart installation.

[jdhurst]

I have an X230 here and it needs the Dock attached to reinstall the operating system. It may be the same for your X220.

[akesai]

you have to use cdrom to load the product recovery (R.R)
boot from usb cant work,i've tried before